Parenting Cultural Norms

[Tortoiseonthehalfshell]

Does anyone know of any decent books or websites that talk about parenting norms in different countries? I was really intrigued by a thread on here last week where an English woman working as an au pair in Sweden was so horrified by what she saw as abuse that she called social security on the parents, and a Swedish poster now living in England talked about some of the things that are usual in the UK which Swedes see as bad parenting.

I belong to a US, a UK and an Australian parenting forum, and the differences stand out to me, but I'm really fascinated and want to research further. Does anyone else know about/care about this stuff?

Otherwise I'm just going to write it myself. As soon as someone gives me a huge research grant, obviously.

Hi Tortoise, Do you mind me asking the names of the US and Aus forums?

I'm Australian. I had my oldest son in Hong Kong and my younger daughter here in the UK where we currently live.

England and Australia are fairly similar really in terms of parenting norms really I'd say.
The main difference so far has been pregnancy / birthing, where Australia adopts a more US style of private insurance and hospitals for birth being a lot more prevalent.
The other one I'm finding at the moment is schooling, with religious schools being government run, it doesn't seem fair to me to have a priority system for church goers, to a school run by public funds {and we are church goers, so this has worked in our favour, so it's not sour grapes}
On the whole though nothing I've experienced from either of the countries would be considered terribly alien in parenting styles.

In Hong Kong, I found there were a big differences though.

Sorry I can't help you with resources, but could certainly expand a lot more if you need case studies when that grant comes in!

Interesting post quirrelquarrel but I'm left not knowing whether or not you prefer the more child-centred approach, having been brought up by parents who were more insistent on you being independant from a very early age. This approach seems very tough but then I'm very child-led myself. I do accept some people go to far the other way though and over-protect their children unnecessarily. From your post I think you might prefer something in the middle. Am I right?

I personally do think it's important that children are listened to and have their say. Children are people not animals to be trained and need to learn how to become part of a family and wider society. I think modelling good behaviour and including them in discussion probably achieves more in the long term than ordering and demanding.

And it's intriguing that you find England to be child centred as the English are often seen as loving their animals more than their children. After all this is the country of boarding schools, "child-free" weddings, pubs, "children should be seen but not heard" proclamations etc.

It has been said that the Italian and Spanish(to name two nations) seem to love all children and welcome them everywhere, the English love only their own.

"even the French plastics work hard at school"

QuirrelQuarrel, I don't understand what you mean by 'plastics' in this context?

Deep in rural Spain with dodgy connection but will try to contribute.

There are some important differences in parenting between what I see here and on MN or at home in Ireland.. The most noteworthy of these are no doubt in the times things happen. We'reon school holidays now so my 3 and 5 year olds will probably go to bed about 22.30 (or even later if it's a weekend night and we have friends round) and get up about 9.30, with a midday siesta of about 2 hours. It would be crazy to do it any differently in this climate, and with their Dad getting home at 8 or 9 pm.
If we go out to lunch, the kids are included.. To dinner, probably too,(nothing wrong with falling asleep in the buggy very occasionally) unless inappropriate and if we have friends around for dinner or a BBQ or whatever, everybody is involved.. If that means the kids falling asleep in parent's arms and being put into my bed, so be it.. Once in a while is not going to undo everything. I realise this is coming across as very defensive, but it really gets my goat on MN how pele get into a tizzy over kids being in bed at 7, so Mum can watch the soaps, and up at bloody cockcrow..
I think kids get a good deal here, actually.. School starts gently and life in general gives them lots of opportunities to have fun in large groups of people and see that, god forbid, the world does not revolve solely around them.
We tend to enter into motherhood a few years later here too, so broken nights and breastfeeding are taken with a slightly more philosophical attitude, rather than the obsession with "getting a life back"..
And, anecdotal evidence it may be but I don't see the huge rates of family breakdown I see in the UK, maybe because the parents take good care of themselves and their friendships too..
I'm going to stop now.. Because I'm genuinely not after a bun fight.. But what I came on to say was.. there are different ways of parenting.. Each has their own context and their own reasons.. And to think that yours is the only right way is very foolhardy indeed.

People not pele

iPad

think i'm moving to spain...

Tortoise

I think that the American's desire to "train" the children, especially for sleep, is strongly linked to the women having to return to work so quickly. If I had to work FT with a very young baby, I too would be desperate to get the sleep sorted! That said, it is of great credit to them that they also BF and express so much. (Although women who try, but can't get BF properly up and running, so express, must eventually go with some FF just as their milk runs out, and I can't think that American women are somehow phsychically able to express more for longer.)

As for the rest, it's a combination of somewhat defensive medicine (hence lots of checks, but also immediate intervention if something is not "normal") and the self-perpetuating nature of things. So, if your friend took her child to see a doctor because her child was/was not doing X, it's pretty hard not to do the same, especially when the doctor is also expecting (and getting paid when) you to go to him/her.

Thanks TanteRose!

quirrel - that's so intersting. Your upbringing sounds almost exactly like mine - but in this country, 40-odd years ago!! I agree that everything is childcentric now - and I've always felt a bit of a freak for trying to buck the trend for what I would see as indulgent hyperparenting, where even the busiest of parents seem to involve themselves in the minutiae of their children's lives to the point of suffocation, IMO.

Oddly, though, parents seem to care far less for other people's children than was the case in my day, and there seems to be a culture of competition amongst parents that wasn't about in my day either.

OP - I wonder if you've read Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi? He does his research well, and will have a bibliography at the back which may point you in the direction you want to go. Also suggest some of the american writers - Neil Postman (Disappearance of Childhood), Anne Cassidy - Parents Who Think Too Much - an interesting critique of modern American parenting.

Haven't got my specs, so apo;ogoes if these have alreay been suggested.

Good luck with your research.